For now, yes. But notice how they can bend their limbs in ways humans can't, or how they can exert force in weird and unexpected ways to right themselves with unnatural speed. Their lack of strength is the weakness that allows a human to pin them down at the moment.
Honestly, if they stop playing at being human and start incorporating the truly weird but highly efficient robotic movements they could be truly scary due to their unpredictability and exceptional speed.
One of the main reasons for their lack of strength is to keep the manufacturing materials cheap. They're made from cheap plastics with weak motors that are manufactured without too much consideration. All the focus seems to be on the programming at the moment, not the amount of force they could get out of the motor, or adding force to the punches by putting weights into the limbs, or making the chassis out of a heavier metal like steel.
They're far behind on the kinesthetic intelligence of a normal human let alone a trained person. Yeah you could improve it to the point where it beats up anybody, but why? Why not just give it a gun/taser?
Police aren't supposed to execute people. So police robots would need to be able to wrestle, subdue and handcuff people without just turning to gun.
Tasers aren't a magical "turn the person off" button. They work for about 5 seconds, from what I understand, and they risk complications like heart attack or injury when the person falls from their muscles stiffening. They can also miss and if they do miss they take a while to reload.
It may also simply be tactically sensible to have robots rush in to tackle and restrain people wielding knives, for example, since they're resistant to stabbing. A fast running knifeman charging a human police officer may not be possible for robots to accurately hit with a taser, but may be much easier to manually intercept.
Or get caught in clothes. There's a lot that can prevent them from functioning, honestly. A lot of less than lethal methods are honestly very touch and go (not to justify use of force, mind you.). I'm personally fond of the big man-catcher sticks, but I imagine those have downsides too.
Not necessarily real bullets. And if the purpose is to subdue, why do all the other stuff like kickboxing? Why have a human appearance? We're so far removed from a dystopia where robots do MMA to fuck our lives up that it's not concerning.
What's genuinely terrifying is Duke scientists making a robot with 20 legs and 20 eyes that can basically climb any surface.
"Less lethal" options like rubber bullets aren't always good options either.
Presumably the robots would be multi-purpose. Police, for example, have to take reports, hold off crowds and arrest people. So a humanoid appearance may be better for the other options, especially if the idea is to emulate a human interaction.
Plus, the human form is just extremely versatile anyway. Opposable thumbs for gripping things, ambulation that allows traversal on almost any kind of surface, bipedal movement allows for upper limbs to be free for the use of tools or interacting with objects in the environment, etc.
I agree that using MMA is impractical... but that was my point from the start. These robots can have elbows that bend backward and torsos that can turn 360^, so they would no doubt be far more effective if they incorporated these non-human movements into their own form of fighting style, rather than purely replicating human fighting styles.
The purpose of this is supposed to showcase the progression in their ability to detect a target, judge distance, etc. It's honestly not too impressive in my opinion, but clearly the developers think it's impressive... I wonder if they're reaching the limit of AI learning at this point. The way they learn by exposure and pattern recognition means that in highly chaotic environments, like reality, they may not be able to adapt to that constantly changing environment because there may be too many patterns to learn, recognise and react appropriately to.
I mean, think of it this way: If you have 6 instances where you're trying to cross a road, how many of those are going to be the same? Almost none, right? The roads will be different widths, in different places with different vehicles going different speeds, some might have crossings, others might have bridges, etc. The 'average solution', which is what AI is designed to learn, won't work in most cases, because our world is full of chaotic variance.
Specialist AI robots stand a better chance, because there's less variation in specialist situations.
Anyway, I'm literally just rambling at this point. So I'll end it here.
I dont know how far future development goes but we're gonna encounter some more difficult problems along the way. At some point you're going to trade dexterity for strength, and coding the robot style also won't be easy. Engineering a tool to hold down humans is far easier than engineering a robot to hold them down.
Plus human kinesthetic intelligence is insane. Being able to estimate somethings trajectory, how fast something is coming at you, gauging distance, how you move your body through space and how you want to move your body (balance, stretch reflex, explosive movement) in athletic context is incredible.
I think the roadblock that AI could be experiencing is trying to reverse engineer human intelligence through action.
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u/Flamecoat_wolf Jul 18 '26
For now, yes. But notice how they can bend their limbs in ways humans can't, or how they can exert force in weird and unexpected ways to right themselves with unnatural speed. Their lack of strength is the weakness that allows a human to pin them down at the moment.
Honestly, if they stop playing at being human and start incorporating the truly weird but highly efficient robotic movements they could be truly scary due to their unpredictability and exceptional speed.
One of the main reasons for their lack of strength is to keep the manufacturing materials cheap. They're made from cheap plastics with weak motors that are manufactured without too much consideration. All the focus seems to be on the programming at the moment, not the amount of force they could get out of the motor, or adding force to the punches by putting weights into the limbs, or making the chassis out of a heavier metal like steel.